Breathe, repeat
by TMBlue
Summary: 7 Christmases. For the 2011 Ron/Hermione Christmas Fic & Art Fest!
1. Part one

**A/N:** Some friends and I decided to put together a **2011 Ron/Hermione Christmas Fic & Art Fest**, in honor of Ron/Hermione's perfect relationship as well as our good friend Dove's birthday, which is today! I'm posting part one of seven here, and will post two more parts throughout the day.

Happy birthday, Dove! I hope it's fantastic. (see you tonight!)

* * *

><p><strong>Breathe, repeat.<strong>

**Part One.**  
><strong>22 December 1991<strong>

There were a lot of things he could have done. In fact, one of those things was most certainly 'nothing at all.' It wasn't as if they had that sort of... relationship. She wasn't _related _to him. Or anything like that...

In fact, a few months ago, he'd been rolling his eyes and scowling in her direction whilst her back was turned.

He felt uncomfortable, suddenly, remembering _that _particular detail, and he took a long, deep breath, staring into the roaring fire.

So instead of doing the nothing that he probably would have, on any ordinary occasion, he cleared his throat and trudged upstairs to his dormitory, happy that no one was around to see him as he sighed and approached his trunk, digging towards the back for something...

Feeling irrationally strange, he removed his best quill, the one his mother had bought him before the start of term... Honestly, the only new thing in his trunk, come to think of it. But that didn't matter. It wasn't like _he _was getting much use out of the bloody thing.

He studied it carefully, turning it round to inspect it for scuffs or scratches. And, finally, deeming it 'good enough', he shrugged and stood.

The dormitory door creaked open, and Ron jumped, shoving the quill into his robe pocket. Seamus entered the room with Dean, heading for their own packed trunks. They were leaving on the train, in the morning.

Relief flooded him as Seamus and Dean completely ignored him, and he wondered, really, why it had mattered so much. First of all, if Seamus and Dean could possibly guess what his intentions actually were for the quill that had been in his hand when they'd entered the room, then that would make them mind readers... which would be a much more interesting topic all of a sudden than 'Ron's giving Hermione a quill for Christmas.'

And besides, what was it that he was really doing? Nothing. In fact, it was quite silly, actually, to even think she'd want another quill. She probably had half a dozen sparkling new ones and another set on reserve in a sealed glass case for when one of the others gave out-

He grinned and tugged at his shirt, unbuttoning the top two buttons and scratching his neck as he descended back down into the common room. Surely, she'd still be up, revising something that wasn't due until mid-March...

Spotting her frizzy head several metres away, he approached her, swinging his robe pockets, hands buried inside, as he came into view of her face, lip between her teeth, eyes focused down on her work.

"Hey, Hermione," he called out as he sank into the chair across from her, at the table where she had strewn about more notes and papers than he'd have ever thought could _actually _fit atop the space available...

"Hm," she muttered, scribbling line after line down a large scroll of parchment. Watching her hands move, lightning across paper, he drifted off, mesmerized, and nearly forgot what he'd come to see her about.

"What's up, Ron- oh..." Her inky fingers had left fingerprints along the side of her quill, and she lifted her left thumb to her tongue, licking it quickly and rubbing at the marks, removing them, for the most part... at least, to _her _apparent satisfaction...

She moved to resume her energetic revision.

"Ah, here," he said finally, reaching into his robe pocket and removing the new quill. "I'm not using this. And... I dunno... are we exchanging Christmas gifts? Anyway..." He cleared his throat again as she froze, dropped her old quill to the tabletop, and gently took the new quill from him.

"You're giving me your quill?" she asked, studying him a bit too closely...

"Uh, sure?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him and he shrugged.

"You go through the bloody things so much faster than I do. I'll be okay with the one I'm already using until sometime late in fourth year. You, however, will need a replacement before the hour is up, judging by this," and he gestured to the massive piles of work that she had built up around her, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

She blinked at him.

"This one looks brand new..." she said slowly, holding it gingerly between her fingers.

"Yeah," and he shrugged yet again. He wasn't honestly sure if this was going well or not... "Right," he started quickly, changing the subject, "I reckon I'll find Harry for a game of Wizard's chess now. Please do join us in 1997 when you've finished up revising, yeah?" He smirked at her and she rolled her eyes, but she shot him a grin as he stood, rubbing the back of his rather warm neck as he shuffled towards the settee where Harry was laughing with Dean, who had evidently returned to the common room whilst Ron had been... preoccupied.

Ron collapsed onto the settee and propped his feet up on the coffee table as Harry tossed him a chocolate frog.

So, he'd Christmased Hermione. He pondered her reaction to his gift a few times before dismissing it.

Right. Because... it was... nothing.

Sort of...


	2. Part two

**Part Two.**  
><strong>25th December 1992<strong>

He'd been pacing his dormitory for far too long. It was starting to get a bit ridiculous. He just couldn't stop laughing, biting his tongue to try and cut it short every single bloody time. But it wasn't working, and it was getting late, and he needed to get this over with before visiting hours were up and...

So, okay... Hermione _happened _to have the fur and ears and tail of a cat...

The image resurfaced for the millionth, billionth time, and a new burst of laughter shot free as he bent over, hands on his knees.

"Alright, cut it out!" he shouted, standing up tall again in the middle of the empty dormitory.

He bounced up and down, shaking his hands and breathing in bursts to clear the grin completely off of his face. He had it, for a second. He really did. But then, as he nodded, walking resolutely towards the door, his lips twitched and he stomped his foot.

"Damn it, Ron!"

The door swung open and there stood Harry, eyebrows raised as he took in the sight of Ron's red face, a bizarre mixture of frustration and mirth spilling from every feature.

"What _are _you doing?" Harry asked.

"Practicing my straight face," Ron said, blanking out his expression and staring back at Harry. "How's this? Effectively serious but not _too _serious?"

"Effective... for what?" Harry asked, tilting his head to the side and scrutinizing Ron's plastered on expression.

"Nevermind," Ron said suddenly, waving Harry away and brushing past him. "Going to the loo..." he added, derailing any attempts from Harry to question Ron's rather odd behaviour any further.

It wasn't that he didn't want Harry to know what he was doing... was it?

No. Of course not...

He shrugged away this new confusing feeling of secrecy and felt around inside his robe pocket for the seventh or eighth time, whistling his way out of the portrait hole and through the castle corridors, trying desperately to keep his mind off of Hermione's current appearance, to avoid another fit of giggles before he could reach her. Just fifteen more minutes, and he'd be heading _back _up to the dormitory, his back turned on the infirmary, and he could jump for utter joy if he wanted to. Fifteen more minutes...

And then, amazingly, he was face to face with the infirmary doors, sun setting lightly through the west facing windows. Taking a deep breath, bracing himself, he opened the doors and stepped through. Hermione's face was turned away, leaving a head of very fluffy cat hair resting atop her pillow.

He bit the inside of his cheek.

"Hermione."

She turned several inches to glance up at him before cringing and looking away.

"I keep forgetting how awful I look. Ugh..." and she covered her face with her hands, sinking lower down her pillows as he sat in the chair by her side.

"You don't look awful," he said, maintaining seriousness for a moment longer. "You look... furry," and he pressed his lips together, blinking back tears of suppressed laughter.

"What are you doing back here?" she asked, through her hands.

"Oh," he said, snapping out of a close call, lips twitching, as he remembered that he _did _actually have a reason to be here. He leaned heavily onto his left hip and reached into his robe pocket, slowly pulling out a silver quill, low lantern light glinting off of it. "I brought you something."

He cleared his throat pointlessly as she uncovered her face to look down at what he was holding.

"It's not really... much," he began. "I just... you know. I figured, you might be able to use it while you're in here... _recovering_..." His voice broke on his last word, and he sucked his bottom lip into his mouth quickly to cover for it.

"But, Ron... why..." she started, taking the quill from him gently. "Oh, it's Christmas, isn't it," she concluded, meeting his eyes with her yellow ones for a moment. And for some reason, laughter died deep in his throat this time and he was able to concentrate on the way she looked down at her own hands again, studying his gift, turning it over in her palm.

"I gave Harry a book about Quidditch. So, obviously, I had to be clever a _second _time and come up with something to give you, too." He scratched at the back of his neck. "Anyway, I know I sort of gave you one last year, but this one is special."

"Where did you get this?" she asked, half-interrupting him, as he'd had a lot more to plow through before she'd derailed him.

"Uh, right," he said, voice low as Madame Pomfrey emerged from her office to make her last rounds for the night. "It's not new, sorry. But... we've got this old trunk, right, up in the attic... and it's full of stuff from ages ago. So, this could be an antique... or something. Thought you might like the idea of writing your notes with a quill that was floating around at the same time that one of your-" he gestured towards the towering stack of books on Hermione's bedside table "-ya know, _scholars_, or whatever, was busy writing now-famous literature. Famous to _you_, anyway... So I grabbed it, while I was packing for school, at the start of term... No one's going to miss it. Everything up there's all dusty and forgotten about anyway..."

He did smile then, lopsided and teasing, and she seemed hesitant to put the quill down, rolling it over and over in her hand. He was caught watching her, until suddenly, her ears twitched and a long, elegantly bushy tail swept out from under her sheets to brush inches from his lap, trailing on up towards the bedside table with no signs of stopping.

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped an inch...

"Oh, stupid tail!" she hissed, squeezing her hand closed around her new quill whilst grabbing her tail roughly with the other hand, tucking it back under the covers and scowling, generally, around the infirmary at large.

Ron hiccuped back his mounting glee, promptly choked on it, and was suddenly in an absolute fit of laughter. Hermione glared a hole through him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he cried, betraying his own apology as he continued to bubble with mirth. "I know... it's not funny. It's just that... it's so damn _funny_!"

"Ron!"

He tried to sit up straighter, heaving each breath and wiping at his eyes.

"Okay, okay," he panted, "I'm good now. Fine. Yeah."

"Wouldn't care to see another show then, would you?" she asked, staring him down.

...with those _cat _eyes...

He swallowed.

"No, no," he said quickly, shaking his head. "No, I promised I wasn't going to laugh at you... and then I did. I'm sorry. Really..."

"Promised? Who did you promise?" she puzzled, but he ignored her.

"It's just... isn't it better that it _is _funny and not... horrifying or depressing?" he asked, feeling a bit proud of his sudden logic. "I'm sorry, but I do think I'd rather laugh at your newly acquired cat attributes than to know you're... actually seriously ill."

Hermione took a long moment to simply blink in his direction.

"Okay, that makes a strange sort of sense," Hermione said slowly, somewhat visibly taken aback by his logic. "But I'm uncomfortable enough as it is! Try not to make it any worse by collapsing into a fit, Ron... for Merlin's-"

Madame Pomfery cleared her throat rather more loudly than was probably necessary, and Ron looked up at her.

"Visiting hours are up, Mr. Weasley," she said, eyebrows raised.

"Ah, right," he said, and he stood quickly. "See you later, Hermione. Happy Christmas."

He tossed her a smile, and she tried to return it... through her fur coat. He cleared his throat to keep from grinning too wide, and he turned to make his exit. But through the doors, he found that instead of walking back along the corridors in various stages of fitful laughter, he was relatively peaceful.

She'd seemed to like it, his gift. Hadn't she?

He shrugged it away. Christmas was actually rather brilliant this year, he thought. And of _course _it had nothing to do with seeing Hermione cough up a furball before breakfast. Certainly not...


	3. Part three

**Part Three.**  
><strong>24 December, 1993<strong>

It had accidentally become a pattern, and he wasn't about to break it this year. He'd considered a few options, for the first time. And had concluded, in the end, that clearly, tradition needed to be upheld. And it had become perfectly obvious what the right choice was the moment he'd fully immersed himself in Honeydukes for the first time, with Hermione at his left shoulder.

He'd actually wrapped this one. But... well, he had a great excuse, didn't he? Sugar quills came in a box, so of course it only made sense to wrap it. It just fit so nice and neat into a square bit of colourful paper...

He'd seen her twice so far that day, but had forgotten to gift her. So now, in the common room at nearly midnight, he finally approached her, tossing his body onto the settee next to her as he ripped open a packet of jelly slugs with his teeth. She raised an eyebrow at him as he fished a pear flavoured slug from the bottom of the pack.

"Mm..." he moaned, delighted. "These are brilliant. Want one?"

He held out the packet, and Hermione wrinkled her nose in his general direction.

"No, thanks," she said, before turning back to the book in her lap. "How can you even eat those after spitting the real ones up for hours?" she added, and he smirked.

"Who knows," he shrugged, dropping the packet back on top of his own lap.

She fell silent, engaged in her book once again.

And he paused, considering her.

So... maybe he'd not quite thought this present through, exactly. Sure, _he_ loved sweets. In fact, he was quite sure they would comprise a rather unbelievable portion of his diet if he had enough money to send off for more... But.

Hermione didn't particularly care one way or the other about sweets, did she. And her parents... they did something mental, for a living, that involved barbarically repairing teeth that had been damaged, in large part due to poor eating habits. Which most certainly included the mass consumption of sweets.

He watched her closely for a few moments as she read. And then, suddenly, The Plan occurred to him.

He'd often catch her chewing on the end of a quill, when deep in the midst of studying or taking down notes. And yes, it was Christmas Eve, but had he ever known that to stop Hermione from revising? Never.

So, he made himself comfortable, slouched back against the corner of the settee that was created by the meeting of the arm and the back cushions. He even ventured to plop his legs down, half up on the couch, angled in Hermione's direction. She paused to raise an eyebrow at him before reaching for her slightly battered looking quill.

Any minute now.

Her eyes darted across page after page of tiny print.

Ron fished for a cherry slug and chewed happily, content with his plan.

She scanned a large chunk of hand-written notes.

And then.

She bit her lip. And lifted her quill to her mouth, nibbling on the end of it.

"Ah ha!" Ron shouted, dropping his legs off the couch, sitting up straight, and spilling his slugs in the process.

Hermione's eyebrows shot up under her fringe.

"What is it?" she asked, staring at him, quill hand frozen in midair as she waited for an explanation.

"Wouldn't it be nice if your quill tasted half as good as my jelly slugs?" he asked, and she stared, if possibly, even harder at him, lips parting. Okay, maybe not the best wording he could have used...

"What on _Earth_..."

"Here!" he said, reaching into his bag and retrieving the gift. He handed it over to her and immediately felt oddly self conscious.

Well. He hadn't seen that coming, really...

Clearing his throat, he watched as her wide eyes angled down to study the rather nicely wrapped gift.

"Oh," she said softly, "thank you, Ron."

"Don't thank me yet," he warned. "Better see what it is first." He grinned as she glanced back up at him.

She took her time to carefully open the gift, to the point that he became quite fidgety, wishing she'd get it over with. And then, finally, she held up the box, inspecting it. A smile very slowly spread across her face.

"You chew on the end of your quills when you get really deep in thought about something," he blurted, clearing his throat again.

"Do I?" she asked, not looking up at him.

"Mmm..." he mumbled.

"This is a really nice one," she said slowly.

"Yeah, holds the flavour for longer than the regular ones. And it's strawberry, which I think you like?" He shrugged and she nodded, finally meeting his eyes as she continued to smile.

"You wrapped this one."

"Ah, yeah. Well, it's in a box, you see..." he muttered, making next to no sense and shrugging once more.

"Thank you, Ron."

"You're welcome."

She might have been blushing, but it was really difficult to tell, and the common room was growing quite warm... and it was really late, past midnight, which meant he'd actually given her her first Christmas Day gift...

Which also meant he had to leave, quickly, because he was far too aware of everything around him, particularly his own hands...

"Right," he said, trying to cover this new, very strange feeling with cheerfulness as he picked up his spilled jelly slugs and stuffed them into his bag. "Better head up to bed."

"Okay," she said softly, still smiling. He stood, tossed his bag up onto his shoulder, and gave her once last quick glance.

"Ron," she said, stopping him before he could look away and leave the room... leave whatever bizarrely thick atmosphere had begun to settle over them...

"Hm?"

"You don't mind if I give you yours, tomorrow, when I give Harry his?" she asked.

"Mine..." he trailed off, looking down at her where she remained seated on the edge of the settee.

"Your gift, of course," she laughed, shaking her head.

"Oh! Well..." He cleared his throat again. "No, I don't see why I'd mind that."

"Okay," she said again, that little smile returning.

"Right, goodnight, Hermione," he said, infectiously smiling back before turning away from her.

"Goodnight," her heard her call, as he reached the stairs.

She'd gotten him a gift.

The words now seemed to be playing on a loop inside his own head. And the strange thing was, he was fully aware of how absurd they were. She'd given him gifts before! Of course he should have assumed...

He shook himself as he reached the dormitory door. And the words seemed to float away, dissolving down the steps, back the way he'd come.

It was Christmas. And he didn't need to be bothered with anything else, least of all that ridiculous cloud of nerves and self-consciousness that had seeped into the common room moments ago.

Forgetting it, he entered the dormitory and dropped his bag with a thud to the floor, sighing out a long, deep breath at the loss of the weight on his shoulder.

But just before he dressed for bed, he recalled Hermione's smile and her genuine words of gratitude. So, she'd liked his gift, again.

Cool.


	4. Part four

**Part Four**  
><strong>25 December, 1994<strong>

He hadn't seen her in hours. In fact, it was growing rather suspicious, the longer the day stretched on. He was just beginning to wonder if she'd really been hurt, by not being asked to the ruddy ball. And honestly, he was starting to wish he'd just stayed up in the dormitory as well. Maybe he could have let Hermione _almost _win a few games of wizard's chess in the common room, while everybody else was off being ridiculous...

But, instead, he was on his way down to the transformed Great Hall, where he was bound to make an utter fool of himself. It was either that, or Fred and George would make sure _something _made a fool of him.

Once he'd finally made his way to the entryway with Harry, face to face with the Patils, he did a series of things automatically, because his brain seemed to shut down. And then, suddenly, he was in the midst of the Ball with Padma, who looked... a bit put out. Everything was too fancy, too sparkly and clean... and he didn't fit in here.

He wasn't sure if he wished he _did _fit in because he wanted to be invisible, to blend in with the crowd and not stand out to be ridiculed, or if it was because he wanted-

And then he saw her.

Hermione.

And he hardly recognized her.

And she looked... _very happy_.

And she wasn't alone at all.

And he was suddenly quite sick.

The night passed in a thick, hazy blur of an upset stomach and stabs of... something he wasn't sure he could name. And anger, oddly sudden and real, and he didn't want to feel this way about her. He wanted to go back to how things were, actually. To before he was sitting here, depressed and upset. Back to when they'd been best friends and they'd had a lifetime of days yet to come. Because he'd never thought about it, really. He'd never considered that things could change.

But they _were _changing... weren't they?

And so, when she finally addressed him, he couldn't stop himself. He rowed with her, and stomped up to his dormitory, leaving her to sigh frustratedly at his retreating back. And to _cry_. He was sure he'd seen her tears. But he'd ignored it, because he was the one who'd been having it rough tonight... wasn't he? He didn't owe her anything...

She'd actually been... _happy_. Now he _really _wanted to disappear...

Hours later, he couldn't sleep. He stared, hardly blinking, up at the ceiling above his bed.

It was bollocks. _He _was supposed to...

Well. He was supposed to _what_?

What was he entitled to that he felt he'd been cheated out of getting... or cheated out of _keeping_? And it was then, in the dark, with sickening memories of Hermione's arms around Viktor Krum, that he understood.

He'd thought... He'd _really _thought...

No. That wasn't quite it. He hadn't _thought_, had he. Because he hadn't bothered to really consider the truth. He'd _assumed_. All this time.

He'd assumed that she was just Hermione. He'd assumed that she was always going to be... what she was to him. That things would never change. But things were always changing, weren't they. And he'd been left so far behind...

He wished so many things that he couldn't put into words. He wished he'd seen some kind of a sign, earlier, when he'd still had a chance to catch up. What did she want, exactly, that he wasn't?

He breathed out a bitter laugh.

Everything. That's what. Viktor Krum was all of the things that Ron wasn't. All of them.

And _that_ was so very _many _things... surely.

He considered his gift, the one he'd wrapped for her, to give to her tonight when he thought he'd be returning to Gryffindor Tower to find her, as usual, revising in the Common Room. Perhaps she wouldn't be too gutted at not getting an invitation. Perhaps she'd think the Ball was just as ridiculous as he did. And he'd give her the gift he'd planned, and she'd thank him and smile, and it would make the slog through the night worth it.

But now, she was probably dreaming pleasantly, sickeningly, of Krum... and here Ron was, unable to sleep because of one stupid night. One moment, really, to change too many things.

He scooted to the edge of his bed and reached a lanky arm underneath it, retrieving a relatively well-wrapped package. He turned it over in his hands and sighed. And he wondered... did she see how different the world looked now?

He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and shook his head. Without another thought, he climbed out of bed and shuffled across the dormitory, opening the door with the tiniest creak and slipping through. He made his way down the stairs, but just as he came around the second to last curve, he was certain he heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by a quick scuffle. Frozen, he listened, wondering who could be up at this hour. But silence lingered, and he turned the last curve down, entering the dark Common Room at last.

Her eyes shone wide in the moonlight, and he gasped, fumbling for his wand.

"Ron? !"

"Bloody hell, Hermione!" he whispered harshly, as her outline became more prominent, where she was standing just a few feet away from him. "You nearly gave me a stroke!"

"Well," she said, crossing her arms heavily over her chest, "I could say the same to you! What did you think you were doing, lurking on the steps for so long?"

"I heard a noise, coming from down here," he explained, "and obviously _you _were the source of it."

"What do you want?" she bit back, tightening her jaw.

"Didn't think I'd run into you, did I! So... don't reckon I want anything from _you_," he said, frustratedly. She closed her eyes and puffed out a short breath.

"Ron, why are you down here at this hour?" she demanded.

"Don't see how that's any of your business," he mumbled.

"Oh, fine!" she shouted shrilly, untangling her arms from across her chest in order to toss them up into the air. "Go on, then. Have at it... whatever _it _is. I'm going to b-"

But her eyebrows furrowed and she stopped speaking abruptly, staring at something near Ron's left elbow.

Oh, right. Her gift. Which he was still holding under his arm.

"What's that?" she sniffed.

"Uh, yeah," he muttered, removing it from under his arm. "It's your Christmas gift," and though he was trying to keep up his tone of annoyance, he was actually failing quite thoroughly.

"What? !" and she looked up into his eyes, moonlight glowing in her own dark, round pupils.

"I was just going to chuck it down here somewhere, and not say who it was from, so you'd find it in the morning," he shrugged. "Stupid plan. I dunno, it's got to be nearly 3 o'clock in the morning..."

But his excuses didn't actually excuse the _thought_ that went behind what he'd come down to do. And Hermione didn't seem to take note of any of them at all. In fact, she was looking rather flushed and impressed and caught completely off guard.

"Why not just give it to me properly?" she asked him, and something about the innocence and cluelessness of her tone of voice set him on edge again.

"Oh, I don't know," he started, sarcastically. "You think maybe I didn't particularly fancy seeing you, at the moment?"

"I hate you sometimes," she whispered, almost inaudibly. But his heart sank as she looked away.

"Oh, go on," he said, trying to dismiss it, because he really did not want to row again. Not right now. He was still too cross with her, and he knew, from experience, that he'd say all sorts of things he didn't mean if he rowed with her just then.

Okay, so maybe he'd learned one thing, tonight...

"You're here now so, might as well..." and he handed her the package.

She looked oddly skeptical at first, as if he was actually trying to trick her or make fun of her.

"I've had it for a while, Hermione," he said, dully. "It's not like I rush ordered something horrid just because you fought with me."

Her eyes shot up to his again, and she glared at him.

"_I_ fought with _you_?" she hissed.

He winced, terrified of getting into this right now. He really would do almost anything to get out of here, immediately, and not have to do this...

"Look," he said instead, against his better judgment, "I'm not going to say I'm sorry right now, okay? Because I'm _not _sorry... yet."

She looked ready to murder him on the spot, but then he did something terribly bizarre... he gave her a small, hesitant smile, lopsided and hopeful. And he watched the anger literally melt away from her face.

That... was bloody brilliant.

"Fine," she huffed, "but then I don't forgive you for any of it and we're still in the middle of a row, aren't we. And I'm not going to apologize, so don't you dare think it's coming."

He grinned wider still and watched the corners of her mouth twitch up before she cleared her throat, blushing. And she began to meticulously, carefully, rip open the colourful paper he'd used to wrap her gift.

When, at last, she'd uncovered her gift, she blinked down at it, and she really did smile.

"This is brilliant..." she said softly.

Feeling far more flustered than he ever had before, in the dark, in the middle of the empty Common Room at 3am, he shuffled his feet and set about rambling... exactly what he did best, when nervous...

"It's... like a Quick Quotes Quill, but better, because it doesn't just make up bollocks as you're dictating. It actually takes down the words you say."

She turned her smile up in his direction.

"Thought it'd be useful because you've got these, uh..." he scratched at the back of his neck, "blisters, on your fingers, from all that damn writing you do."

"I do?" she asked, voice floating through the air so lightly between them, and she looked down at her own hand, studying the blisters he had nearly memorized.

Was it odd that he'd noticed, really? They studied together nearly every night. She revised half of his homework for him, blimey...

"Yeah," and he cleared his throat. "Look, you can go back to being hacked off with me now. But we should... get to bed, yeah?"

Her cheeks flushed a slightly deeper shade of red... or could he really tell for sure, in the darkness?

"Solid plan," she said. "Thank you."

"Any time," and he turned around, before she could speak again, to head back upstairs. But she froze him with her next words, aimed up the staircase at him.

"You really should think about what I said, you know, at the Ball, when we were rowing..." He could almost feel her shyness, edging up the steps towards his back. "Because... if _any _of what I instructed... or said about you... or what I said I _thought_... isn't true or right... then you should probably tell me."

Her words rang as clear as his morning alarm clock, and the night seemed to close in on what she'd really meant. He would never have been able to put it into his own words, or bet on his own suspicions, but he didn't need to ask, to hear her explain it. Not yet. Not now.

Not with memories of Krum still fresh and painful. And real. That was the part that confused him, that muddled him down in his own self-doubt.

But he somehow managed to successfully complete the functions required to turn his neck left, to look halfway over his shoulder...

"Goodnight, Hermione," he said, and this time, she didn't call him back again.


End file.
